Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the myth of the French-colonial technique of anastylosis to re-assemble the temples of Angkor. Imported from the Dutch East Indies within a diplomatic exchange network in 1930, its on-site application was however different and had dramatic effects in post-colonial Cambodia.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates the background of a long-standing myth about the French-colonial restoration of Angkor/Cambodia. Under the term of 'anastylosis', the technique of an entire dismantling and re-assembling of stone temples was supposedly imported in the 1930s by the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient from the Archaeological Service of the Dutch East Indies, bypassing not only the metropolitan centres of both colonies back home in Europe, but also the big colonial rival of British India. As an additional result of a dense flow of scientific knowledge exchange from around 1900 onwards to investigate stylistic influences between the ancient temples of Java and Angkor, the technique of anastylosis was however completely modified and resulted in rather questionable practices. Continuing far into post-colonial times of the young nation-state of Cambodia, the ever growing hubris of French architects to restore whole Angkor to a picture-perfect and high-tech archaeological reserve came to a brutal and sudden stop in 1972 when the area fell into chaos of civil war and Khmer Rouge terror. Handing over the temple of Angkor Wat as a diplomatic gift in the name of mutual heritage conservation, the Vietnamese occupiers of Cambodia after 1979 commissioned - irony of history - the Archaeological Survey of (postcolonial) India to complete the French-colonial project: again with dramatic results which are still visible today when Angkor had become since 1992 a universal icon within UNESCO's World Heritage agenda.